Aug. 25 - 31, 2001 (Vol. 24 : No. 34)
From the publishers of THE HINDU
A tale of two legends
By Nirmal Shekar
"In my dreams, Jack, you always win." --- Lee Trevino.
Quite the most amazing part of witnessing events of deep historic significance is the fact that as long as you live, you tend to remember even the minutest of details concerning them. It is almost as if you have suddenly been transported to an exalted realm and your faculties have momentarily acquired Einsteinesque scope.
In the event, every little thing about that Monday afternoon on the Centre Court at Wimbledon is lodged in memory and every tiny, often irrelevant detail has been stored away.
History was peeping in from behind the forest green backdrop on the most famous tennis court in the world on that day with the clock ticking to 6.17 p.m. A tired Pete Sampras had just volleyed the ball into the net on the second point in the 12th game of the fifth set on serve against Roger Federer. The score: 0-30.
"Come on, Pete. You can do it," ventured a young voice as the great man walked back to the baseline, wiping the sweat off his forehead in idiosyncratic fashion, with the arched forefinger of his left hand.
In a corner of the court, as if in a trance, a statuesque ballgirl was staring intently at Sampras, oblivious to the balls being rolled towards her by a ballboy near the netpost. Perhaps, young as she was, the girl had realised the stupendous significance of the moment and her own duty seemed irrelevant.
A little more than a minute later, as Sampras tossed the ball up to serve at 15-40, Lee Trevino's words about the peerless Jack Nicklaus crossed my mind. And I said to myself: Even in my worst nightmares, Pete, you never lose on the Centre Court at Wimbledon.
Well, for both Pete Sampras, and all those --- including this writer --- who believed that the aura of invincibility surrounding the great champion at Wimbledon cannot possibly be swept away by a teenaged aspirant in a fourth round contest, through those moments of unreasonable pathos, a lesson in sporting mortality was on offer on that Monday.
As obvious as Sampras's decline had been through three rounds of tennis during the first week of the 2001 championships, the sheer weight of history --- the memories of the seven championships he had won in eight years --- made it impossible to believe that the great man would meet with failure on the very court he had ruled for so long with almost God-like powers.
Only two years earlier, in the summer of 1999, on the very court where the 19-year old Federer stripped him of his crown, Sampras had played a brand of tennis that no player --- alive or dead --- may have ever matched on a grass court.
That was in the final of 1999 against Andre Agassi. Often, when one great champion beats another 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 in a Grand Slam final, it means that one of them was at his very best and the other was nowhere near his best.
But, believe me, on that day Agassi was at his very best. He was playing even better than he did in beating Goran Ivanisevic in five sets for his first Grand Slam title on the same court in 1992. Yet, Sampras made him look pedestrian.
This was not just a case of a great champion getting into what the players call the zone. For, on that day, Sampras was in the sort of zone that no man had ever climbed to before and no man will ever ascend to in the foreseeable future.
It was the glorious memory of the transcendental brilliance of Sampras's tennis in the 1999 final that made it impossible to believe, two years on, that the great man's powers were at last waning, that he was no longer the tyrannical champion that he was for so long on the famous lawns.
Sport is a strange business. It is as much a vehicle of dreams as it is a purveyor of nightmares. Summit and abyss are next door neighbours, so to say.
But when you have watched a great performer dominate a stage like Sampras did at Wimbledon, for all the lessons of a lifetime spent in the capricious business of sport, you tend to distance yourself --- just that bit --- from reality.
Then again, the first law of sport is this: every champion that ever lived is vincible. There is no such thing as an invincible champion. The greatest, men like Sampras, are what they are simply because they offer us the illusion that they may be invincible for a long time... until they actually turn out to be vincible.
"When I am playing well, there's nobody I can't beat. Week in and week out, it does get tougher, but when I'm on, it's tough for guys to beat me," Sampras said a week before Wimbledon last June.
The point is, the great man has not been "on" for a good part of a year now. And he blew 30 candles on his birthday cake last fortnight, on August 12 to be precise. He is married, has talked about "reining in a little" and having realised "as you get older that there are cons as well as pros to this life."
So, where does that leave him now? He has won more Grand Slam titles than any player in history (13), has finished No. 1 a record six years in a row and has not won a tournament since beating Pat Rafter in the gloaming to win his seventh Wimbledon title last year.
This apart, at Wimbledon this year, it was clear that Sampras's game was not what it used to be. The speed of eye and the swiftness of foot, allied with the big serve and the impeccable volleys that saw him crush opponent after opponent on the lawns are no longer the virtues they used to be... for the great man is a step slower and has lost a shade of power on his serves and groundstrokes.
Sure signs of ageing? Of course, athletic skills plummet fast and far and at 30, Sampras can hardly expect to be at his best. Is that what you are thinking?
But what of his arch-rival Andre Agassi? A year older, Agassi is playing some of the finest tennis of his career. Having won his third Australian Open in January, Agassi goes into the U.S. Open as one of a handful of hot favourites.
Indeed, Sampras and Agassi, as they have done in many aspects of their games, their personalities and their careers, present a fascinating contrast when it comes to success in the twilight phase.
After slipping to No. 146 late in 1997, Agassi has authored a comeback that few would have believed, at that time, the flashy Las Vegan was capable of enacting. Of his seven Grand Slam singles titles, Agassi has won four past the age of 29!
On the other hand, every one of Sampras's 13 Grand Slam titles was won before he turned 29.
To get to the point straight, these are two entirely different personalities and careers and one cannot imagine Sampras slipping that far and then working his way back to the top at this stage in his life.
Agassi, for all his gifts, has always had to work hard for rewards on the big stage. And, given the breaks he had experienced in his roller coaster career, until 1997, he was hardly under the threat of burnout.
Working with Brad Gilbert, a great motivator, Agassi, who enjoys the grind of training and practice, clawed his way back tenaciously... a remarkable effort which has paid off wonderfully.
Sampras, on the other hand, has never had a long break in his career since the time he announced himself as a world-beater at age 19, winning the 1990 U.S. Open.
In contrast to Agassi, Sampras, supremely gifted, has not had to put in too much effort. If the first sign of greatness is the effortlessness with which great things are achieved, then there has been no greater champion than Sampras in the Open Era. If Agassi is the Elvis Presley of tennis, then Sampras is the game's Mozart.
The great man has never been one to spend too much time on the practice courts --- injured, he won Wimbledon 2000 without ever touching his racquet between matches --- ever since his first famous coach, Dr. Pete Fischer told him, "You are Pete Sampras. You shouldn't bother who's on the other side of the net."
Those words triggered a wave of self-confidence which has swept the man who is, arguably, the best player to pick up a tennis racquet, to stunning levels of excellence that may never be matched in the near future.
It is precisely because of this. It is hard to imagine that Sampras would hang around for too long if his game doesn't reach its customary altitude soon. While the need to leave an enduring mark on the sport is no longer a pressing one, the fact is continuous failure would be a big blow to the great man's pride.
Bjorn Borg quit the game when he slipped to No. 2 --- it's another matter that it was a decision he lived to regret and attempted an unsuccessful comeback much later --- in 1981 but another champion of that era, Ilie Nastase, 10 years after slipping from No. 1, profanely landed at tournament venues on Sundays, lost on Mondays and then ended up in discos, his greatness a distant memory, his name no longer in marquee company.
Frankly, I don't see this happening to Sampras, although he's not someone who'd run away in a hurry on impulse, like Borg did. For, he still loves the sport and that is the only reason why he is still playing.
For, unlike Agassi --- a born showman --- Sampras is not in love with celebrity status. If fame is a drug that's turned many a great champion into a pathetic parody of his winning self, then Sampras has never been an addict. And he never will be.
How long more he will play is something that not even the great man himself knows right now. Nor indeed do we know how rewarding the rest of his career might be. For Time has eroded his skills.
But this much is sure: Sampras's records might fall some time, as indeed all records in sport do, but his greatness is something that cannot be touched by Time. It is rust-proof.